The Drowning Girls Read Online Free Page B

of his back.
    He threw open the door, grinning. “I like where this is going.”
    “I’m a horrible drunk,” I confessed, backing into the house, dropping my sandals onto the tile entry. With one hand, I undid the buttons of my blouse.
    “That’s what I love about you,” Phil said, letting the door click shut behind him. My blouse fell open and he whistled. “Anyway, define horrible .”
    It was too hard to talk. My words felt slurred, my tongue thick. It was easier to kiss him, to show rather than tell.
    We were good at this; I’d come to realize that we were maybe best at this. It had been there from the beginning—a playful physical attraction, the foresight that our bodies would be good together. We’d met at a Sharks game, neither of us particularly hockey fans, both of us accompanying friends with extra tickets. Phil, seated behind me, had spilled beer on my sweatshirt and spent the rest of the night apologizing over my shoulder, then flirting, charming me with that accent. I’d had a few beers, too, which was the only way I could explain the kiss I gave him in the parking lot after the game, one that was long and ripe and full of promise, as if I didn’t have a child at home, an early morning ahead of me. On the train back to Livermore, I’d laughed at myself, so stupid for thinking that a kiss with a stranger was anything more than a kiss with a stranger. And then twelve hours later, he’d walked into the counseling office at Miles Landers, a bouquet of daisies in one hand.
    That was five years ago.
    We pulled apart now, and I sloughed off my blouse, the fabric fluttering to the floor. Phil’s hands were on my bra, struggling with the back clasp, his breath hot in my ear. “Danielle should go away more often. One of those summer-long camps.”
    “Mmm.”
    “Or a study-abroad program. Foreign exchange, whatever you call it. An entire semester, maybe.”
    “Early college,” I murmured. “Send her off at sixteen.”
    He groaned, nudging me toward the stairs, our king-size bed beckoning. We’d had it for three weeks now, relegating our queen-size mattress to a spare bedroom, and it still felt spacious, as if we were splurging on an expensive hotel every night.
    Maybe it was the wine; maybe it was the feeling that had been coming over me slowly since our move to The Palms, the realization that I didn’t have to be me anymore. I’d left the old Liz Haney behind—pregnant in college, dependent on financial aid and a half-dozen part-time jobs and Section 8 housing until I landed my counseling position, but still struggling with the rent when I met Phil. Now she was a ghost, wisp-thin and floating away, that old Liz. Because look at us. Here we were, hobnobbing with the rich and the very rich, and almost blending in.
    “I have a better idea,” I told him.
    “I’m all ears.”
    “Follow me,” I said, and he did—past the living room stacked with boxes, the unfurnished dining room, the gleaming granite of the kitchen. I opened the sliding door off the den, and the Other Woman, the electronic narrator of our lives, warned, “Back door open.”
    But once I was through the door, I hesitated. The backyard was almost too bright, with tasteful landscaping lights aimed at the potted topiaries, the dripping strands of crepe myrtle. Overhead, the moon was a crescent sliver, its gleam reflected on the surface of the pool, where an invisible hand pulled the water gradually toward the infinity edge. Beyond the pool, the yard sloped downward and beyond that was the flat, seamless green of the fairway.
    I faced Phil and undid the button on my waistband slowly, watching him watch me. I hooked my thumbs in my underwear and let them shimmy down my thighs.
    Phil was motionless in the doorway.
    I must have been drunk; my body felt good in the moonlight, strong and sexy, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, before that pesky snake. “Aren’t you going to join me?”
    Phil grinned. “I was just appreciating the